Jlulian’s Stuff

I’m laying in bed. Staring at a blindingly bright LCD, and a sentence strikes me like a bullet from a sniper afar.

“Haha, you eat weird.”

My eating impairment is because of my hilariously bad teeth, which are currently under-going a 5 month overdue root canal. AS SUCH, I can only chew on one side of my mouth. So I tend to sort of suck stuff into my mouth before I chew it(tongue magic)

So I made a list of the things people have called me weird about.

• You eat weird.
• You talk weird (I put no energy into my speech, what can I say).
• Your sense of humor is horribly twisted (internet).
• The music you listen to is weird (See above explanation).
• You sleep at weird times (going to sleep a 5AM is pretty cool, see above explanation)
• You write weird crappy. (Lazy)
• You look at stuff weird (Amblyopia)
• You have weird hobbies (Staring at computers; Did I mention Internet)
• You shake off the worst of insults (ie, ur geh) with little more than shrug
• (Still not done)

This is of course, All nice and demoralizing and all that jazz, but somewhere in there is the one about how I don’t care about people’s opinion, because I make fun of myself enough that anything you try to insult me over I’ve already said about myself, but in a more demaning way. (Woah hey, adding that now)

(This is the product of 5AM “creative” thinking)

Approximately 2 days ago (according to logs) I embarked upon an awesome journey. I’ve have recently finished said journey, but not without many tests of my endurance. (patience)

This journey, of course, was to upgrade my network.

For many years(since 2002) I’ve had a Microsoft MN-500 802.11b router. It’s worked well, and been fine and dandy this entire time I’ve used it. I realized recently however, that despite paying for a 5MBit connection, I recieve only 3MBit. Why? A weak link in the chain. 802.11b is advertised as “11Mbit” but infact in use you might be lucky to push 4Mbit. I’ve used this router obliviously for many years. And, about 2 days ago, it finally started to act up. Whether via a placebo effect or otherwise, I realized performance was dropping, and I even dropped from the network from time to time. I would just not stand for this.

My solution? “Left over” WAP54G and a laptop running Linux. Used in conjuction I can turn a (mostly useless on my previous network) Layer 2 bridge (802.11 to 802.3) to a Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger. Network. (HBFSN(TM))

Pros.

• Harder = Linux; More reliable
• Better = Direct connection to modem; Fewer systems to introduce latency
• Faster = No 802.11b; No limitation (noticeable on my connection anyway)
• Stronger = Linux + iptables; Far more configurable than the screwy interface on my MN-500

Cons.

• Computer is in a box; Hot

The other(not mentioned above) con is that, being stuffed in a box tends to have adverse affects on cable management

But again, there are instant pros. Being directly connected to the modem, I don’t have to flood my (not too secure, or reliable) WiFi network with data during a download, and being right inbetween any user on the network and the internet, I can monitor stuff (bandwidth usage, I’m no big brother) of course this means everyone’s favorite. MRTG.

mrtg

I don’t have before and after pictures, but I doubt the differences will be very noticable to the casual observer. I mean, it’s not like there’s 3 new sets of blinking lights around the TV, right?

Oh, ahaha, well. Then.

But all joking aside, the difference is snappier internet(google loads amazingly fast) and a slight fan hum if you don’t have the TV on.

So yeah. (tis’ all good)

Today, I made Mac ‘n Cheese. This is such an accomplishment I took pictures at the end result.

Just look at that finger-lickin’ good processed food. Mmmm

Once I finished it, I piled it into a bowl and sat down with my faithful companion(the laptop) and began to eat. It would have been a splendid affair, if it had not be for this thing.

Naturally, shortly after I started eating, a number of cats gathered at the table. This cat was daring enough to jump up on the table itself. We had a staring contest (which I lost) as I protected my meal.

Now, if I was being serious about any of this, right here I would have a big block of text shifting into a serious tone about the woes of our nation dependent on processed food (Oh god Fast Food Nation, oh god oh god) But I can only put 15 minutes into a post before I get bored.

So yeah.

So just today, I lost some of my precious precious data. The old copy of this blog. Oh how I long for that single placeholder post, and those endless streams of racist comments.

Today I decided to log into the wordpress(for the first time in months) and it’s flashing and beeping at me to update. So I try. Download the new version. And try to just copy it over the current folder(which should work, I think) but. BUT. My wordpress directory managed to get set to permissions of d———. Such that noone using the FTP service could update it. And I have no shell access to the website, so I couldn’t get come in and go “su chmod 664 wordpress” or whatever.

Worse so than just screwing up the wordpress installation though(I can just do it in another directory, like right now). Is the fact that I can’t get my database infomation back out of the configuration files because the permissions are set to d———(000?) so the precious config.php is in there. And it’s not like I can just go and use default settings for the website, because I don’t have any. So now I’m sad, and without my placeholder of a post and endless reams of racist comments.

So yeah.